Thrill Seeker (11 page)

But I didn’t make it that far.

I turned left. Coldness wound around my ankles, an odd sensation like being grabbed by nothing, cuffs of ice rather than leather.

Weird. But no, not for me. Just a refrigerator truck unloading plastic crates at the back of a shop, cold air seeping out in a cloud of frostiness. I kept walking, goosebumps prickling on my bare legs. I wondered if sandals had been the right choice of footwear. Always hard to know how to dress when the seasons are changing and you’re heading off to a kidnap.

A flash of heat hit me. Darkness. I stumbled, flailed. Screamed but couldn’t. I was squeezed tight, shoved into
blackness. Crushed lungs. Heart attack. Having a, no, stop! For an instant, I was blank with fear. A terrible grip wanted to kill me. I couldn’t breathe. Dying. Heart attack in the street. Face on fire, so hot, burning up, here. Loosen my collar. Too young. Loosen my ribs. Don’t want to. Someone help me, please, dying, loosen me, too young to –

‘Don’t look at my face.’ The voice was in my ear, coming from behind. His breath warmed my skin.

Him, the man from the internet. Natalie, you fucking idiot. What
were
you thinking?

Oof! I was slammed against a hard, flat surface. My head was bagged in dark fabric. I couldn’t see a thing. The hood, or whatever it was, smelled faintly of sweat. His sweat. Even though we’d never met, I recognised his scent, his history, his body; could almost feel the prints of his fingers on my skin, inside me already.

‘Stay still, act natural,’ he said. I heard a car go past. ‘Move it. Now. Fast!’ I stumbled as he hurried me forward. My hearing sharpened, compensating for my blindness. To my right, a van door slid open with a low swoosh. Every breath I drew sucked the fabric against my mouth.

‘Get in,’ he said. ‘Leg up, higher, that’s right. Head down, this way. Hurry up. On the floor. Down! Chrissake, get down!’

The van door clanged shut, making the vehicle shudder. I fell in the direction he urged me, scrambling sideways onto softness, my protests muffled by the press of fabric on my face. Noises from the street went dull. At a guess, I was on a mattress, an old, thin thing without much bounce. I heard him panting, his breath almost as fast as my heart. I listened for other presences but heard nothing. Was someone in the driver’s seat?

We were silent for several seconds, him clutching the fabric around my head, motionless. Perhaps he was as scared as me. Had we been spotted? Were we safe? My throat was thick and tight, my mouth dry.

‘Turn on to your front.’ His voice was level and insistent, expecting no challenge. ‘Lie down properly. On your front. Slowly. Don’t try to look at me. That’s right. Don’t look and you won’t be harmed. Nice and slow, that’s it, good girl. I don’t want to hurt you.’ He paused and gave a crisp laugh. ‘Not yet.’

The hood made my breath dampen my face. The sound of my pumping blood merged with muffled noises outside the van, adding to my disorientation. As instructed, I turned slowly and lay face forward. The man straddled my buttocks, carefully tilting my head back by clasping the cloth to my eyes. The weight of him on my arse aroused me and I realised I was wet, a pulse between my thighs hammering as fast as that in my terrified heart.

The man. What was his name? Baxter Logan. No, not him, Nats. The other one. The new guy.

‘Keep your eyes closed.’ That same steady, authoritative tone.

Den. That was it. A mysterious monosyllable. I wished I could see his face.

He lifted the hood from my head and moulded a hand to my eyelids. I smelled tarnished metal, petrol and cardboard. ‘I’m blindfolding you,’ he said. On a blink I couldn’t suppress, I caught a glimpse of an eye mask and the fat, faded roses of a mattress before I was plunged into darkness again. Den adjusted the mask over my nose then wrapped an extra binding of fabric around my eyes until I couldn’t see a peep of light. Or a keek of light, as Baxter might have said.

‘Stay there. Open your mouth.’

He pinched my cheeks and slotted a hard, rubber ball into my mouth. I protested, less at the object, more at Den’s crude speed. I had to remind myself I wanted this. I’d asked for it, had tacitly agreed he could set up a kidnap scene for me. My teeth latched on to the ball as Den fastened the strap behind my head. My groin melted a little more. Ball gag. This was a familiar object from my time with Baxter. He hadn’t been keen on, as he’d once called it, ‘all that paraphiliacs’ paraphernalia’, claiming he preferred to make me scream using his charm alone.

I remembered him telling me that. I was naked on my knees, hands roped behind my back. ‘Look up at me,’ he’d said, standing there with his big, handsome cock jutting from his suit. I obeyed and he slapped me across the face. ‘Charm, see? Like that!’ I began sinking into my submission, face stinging, room spinning. ‘Baxter Logan, he likes to charm the ladies, charm his wee bitches then make them choke on his dick.’

Baxter Baxter Baxter. What was he doing here? His words sounded so harsh now but at the time, they’d made me swoon. The idea I was one of many women Baxter could pick and choose from and use for his own gain, got me right in the groin. Were that scenario true, I’d have been devastated. But as a fantasy, because I was safe in the reality I was the only woman Baxter loved, it thrilled me. His faux-boastfulness made him, in my mind, all the more powerful and ruthless, a man ruled by his greedy cock. And I loved that. Loved that he could play with the concept of being a profligate, sexually voracious bastard while being a loyal, sexually voracious boyfriend.

Except he couldn’t, as I discovered. That wasn’t what he’d been doing.

I wished I could delete him. Nearly two years, and I still kept comparing new lovers to him. But remembering him in the midst of playing kidnap was a new low, a sign I needed to work harder on letting go. Oh, but if only he were the one doing this to me. Instead of a frightening faceless man, my abductor could be, in another dimension, Baxter Logan, his big hands on my body, his nasty words in my ears.

I rested my tongue against the wedged rubber ball, disliking the taste but finding that position more comfortable than trying to keep my tongue out of the way. Gagged and blindfolded, I grew calmer. I recognised the feeling, that slow process of unravelling, of handing myself over to someone ready to take me.

For a moment, that someone was Baxter. He was here, busying about my body, collar undone, his tie as crooked as his smile and his heart. In my mind, his face was clearer than it had been for ages. I saw the unkempt hair, the heavy brows and rough-hewn handsomeness. I saw eyes so brown their darkness was almost indistinguishable from the black of his pupils.

That’s what I wanted to surrender to: the dark, wild chaos of Baxter’s unchecked passion. But no, that ship had sailed. He’d betrayed me. So why wouldn’t the longing fade?

I pulled my mind back to the present, trying to get a grip, stay focused.

I was alone in a van and my abductor had no face. Such a stupid risk to take.

Den edged down my legs and shoved up my skirt, rocking my thighs left and right to accommodate the material. There was a pause, physical and auditory, when he revealed my underwear. I sensed his eyes assessing me, sliding from ankles to arse. The backs of my knees itched as if his gaze
were a ticklish caress. I bunched my fists, fighting the urge to bat my skirt down and restore a semblance of modesty.

With a masseuse’s technique, Den spanned each calf muscle and ran a hand up either leg.

‘Ve-ery nice,’ he said. When he reached my buttocks, he nudged my knickers higher, crumpling the flimsy fabric into a band and wedging it to form a makeshift thong in the crack of my arse. Behind the ball gag, I groaned in frustration, hating his scrutiny and the small precise manner in which he’d rendered me vulnerable. But at the same time, I liked being forced to endure his inspection; liked his inevitable enjoyment of my discomfort.

I remained motionless as he caressed my rear cheeks, his hand gentle like a lover’s. I didn’t trust that hand one jot. I heard people walking past the van, a woman calling after her child. Den leaned forward, his breath on my neck, his lips touching the tip of my ear. He nibbled there, light as a feather, then traced his tongue along the edge of my lobe. With a gentle touch, he pushed my hair aside to lightly kiss my neck. I couldn’t respond, couldn’t move or kiss back. All I could do was lie in my own darkness, breathe through my nose and wait.

His voice was low and close in my ear. ‘You know what I’m going to do?’ he murmured. ‘I’m going to strip you bare. Completely bare. Not your clothes. You.’ His hand roamed over the naked swell of my buttocks. The pulse in my cunt beat harder. ‘I’m going strip away your will, your personality, your self-respect. I’m going to break you, reduce you to a sobbing wreck.’

A fantasy, a game, much like Baxter’s talk of getting fellated by a bunch of obliging, awestruck women.

Den wrapped his other hand in my hair, trapping my curls
in a fist and forcing my ear against his lips. Nearness made his voice fuzzy, his lips brushing the shell of my ear as he spoke, his breath almost as loud as his words. The touch of his lips made my desire leap.

‘I’m going to get so far inside your head, you won’t know who you are any more,’ he said. ‘And that’s good, because you won’t be anyone. You’ll just be a thing for me to use.’ His hand slipped between my legs to stroke the damp pouch of my briefs, the scrunched fabric only just containing me. A shiver chased along my spine, leaving prickles on my neck. My groin felt unfeasibly swollen, so responsive to his delicate, teasing touch.

‘And from nothing, I’ll make something,’ he went on, tender voiced and darkly seductive. ‘I’ll rebuild you and make you mine. My little bitch.’

My heartrate quickened as my mind flashed back to a FancyFree exchange where I’d shared my fantasy of being kidnapped, chained to his bed and referred to as his ‘little bitch’. At the time I was no doubt chanelling Baxter Logan who often called me his ‘wee bitch’. Was Den speaking words I’d offered or using his own? I wondered if I might end up chained to his bed and began to regret saying that. I didn’t think I’d like the reality of being cold, stiff and unable to sleep.

Increasingly anxious, I tried to recall what else I’d said. Rash fragments swam in my mind: ‘
I like the idea of being afraid because I don’t know what will happen next … a man who enjoys my fear … a jumble of bondage, blindfolds and gags.’

I wasn’t sure what I most feared: this mysterious stranger or the capacity of my overwhelming lust to urge me along dumb, dangerous paths.

‘Put your hands behind your back,’ he said.

I did. He took one wrist and wrapped it in a soft cuff, presumably leather, then pulled the buckle tight. He did the same on my other wrist then, with a click, linked the two cuffs together by the small of my back. I tugged, testing the small amount of slack between my wrists. The resistance I encountered sent lust surging to my groin.

‘So, let’s take a proper look at you,’ he said.

He hooked his hands either side of my knickers and unceremoniously dragged them down and off. His touch brisk and firm, he splayed my thighs, holding me open. I could feel him examining me, eyes locked on the place where I was bloated and slick. Instinctively, I jerked at my cuffs. The short link between them jolted my wrists, sparking another corresponding jolt of need in my groin. I heard myself groan and the sound, though muffled, was filthy, awash with desperation.

Den gave a victorious little laugh. He’d sussed me out, had seen how predictably easy I was and how much his unkindness aroused me. I couldn’t hide it from him, even if I’d wanted to. He stroked between my legs, fingers paddling in my drenched split. I groaned heavily, thinking I might die if he didn’t penetrate me. But he didn’t, he just laughed again.

Kneeling between my legs, he raised one ankle, easing it towards my butt. He buckled a bond around it. I caught the creak of leather, the clink of metal and felt the tug as he tightened it. Another cuff. He slipped a finger between leather and leg, checking the fit, then repeated the action on my other ankle.

‘You’re very acquiescent,’ he said. ‘This bodes well for the things I plan to do to you.’

My entire body was shot through with lust, my cunt made
of hot, wet throbs. I squirmed against the mattress, unable to prevent my hips lifting in search of his hands.

Metal clanked again. A cheaper, tinnier sound this time. Another object. He fumbled with one ankle, then the next. Only when he drew back and I tried to move did I realise my legs were pinned apart, a rod between my ankles preventing me from closing them.

What did you call them? A spreader bar, that was it. I’d seen them online during one of my many fantasy-shopping sprees. A rod of hollow metal linked to ankle cuffs, forcing the wearer’s legs apart.

I thrashed and sobbed. The position was excruciating, exposing me, splitting me, making me long to get fucked. I tugged my feet inwards. The bar rattled but the extra few inches I gained offered no more dignity, serving only to emphasise my powerlessness. What a cruel, clever device the spreader was, forcing me into a brazen display of pink-lipped greed, mocking me for my need while intensifying the very thing it created and offering no respite.

I gave a petulant double-kick at the mattress.

Den laughed, satisfied. I felt cheap, whorish and objectified, as if the point of my existence to him was my wet, eager cunt. Not my mind, my nice eyes, personality or infectious laugh. Cunt. That’s what I was to him: cunt. And every nerve in my body sucked in the dark pleasure of that, cradling its delicious baseness.

‘We’re going for a little drive now,’ said Den.

I writhed, tipping my arse to him and groaning in complaint. I didn’t want to go for a drive. I wanted to get fucked.

‘When I open this door again,’ Den continued, ‘I want to see you in exactly the same position.’ He leaned close, his
breath dusting my ear, his hand bunching my hair. ‘If you try to do anything stupid, I’ll make you pay. So don’t bother. Just lie there, nice and still. OK?’

I nodded, huffing for breath through my nose and making a vaguely affirmative noise behind my gag.